Paper 2 MGT 605 - Discussion Board

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School

University of Cincinnati, Main Campus *

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Course

605

Subject

Management

Date

Jan 9, 2024

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docx

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Uploaded by PrivateMink497

Q1). Professional Workplace Situation When I first graduated college after receiving my bachelor’s degree, I was motivated (motivation) to become the best manufacturing supervisor that I could be. I was driven internally by growth (intrinsic), enjoyment (intrinsic), and purpose (intrinsic). The offers that I received motivated me more because of the bonus potential (extrinsic), promotion opportunities (extrinsic), and company benefits (extrinsic). I got my first job as a supervisor in 2008 and wanted to prove myself. Things went horribly wrong due to my lacking understanding of how (leadership) worked. I wanted to be friendly with operators on the floor to get them to listen, used coercion tactics (coercive leadership) and ignored how to get buy-in the proper way. I tried to use the ( carrot and stick) approach to bribe employees with monetary promises and more overtime if their performance improved. After many investigations into my leadership actions, multiple failed attempts at trying to “win” the floor back and being held accountable for not being a good supervisor, I was written up and fired. Q2). Behavior after the Failure Since I was much younger and naïve to how managing people worked, I did not understand that to lead (Sinek, 2019), it took much more than a degree and a title to get employees to buy-in to me and listen to my requests. HR was very firm with me where I went wrong and told me that leadership roles may not be the career for me. I did not take the time to understand the company strategy (The Nadler-Tushman Congruence Model, n.d.) from the HR handbook on how to run a successful operation. I was devastated to realize that my own tactics of leadership ultimately cost me my job. I began to reflect on the different things I never took into consideration as a leader (Management, 2017) . Although I was embarrassed, I was humbled that I did not know it all and there was still plenty of room for growth before I became a successful leader. I went out and bought a bunch of how-to be a supervisor books and began reading them. I began to learn about the different leadership styles (Eatough, 2022) and how they affect the manufacturing floor. I learned the development vs discipline strategy (Amabile & Kramer, 2011) and why that works so much better than punishing everyone for not following expectations. I got another supervisor job about 2 months later after getting fired from the previous one. Once I onboarded, my first objectives were to understand the expectations of myself from my boss, understand the HR strategy, learn the floor culture, implement or maintain

any current strategies that the company is using, and not make the same mistakes from my prior employment. Q3). If I had to do it all over again Since joining this class, I now understand motivation theories and how they apply to us as workers. I would begin to piece together the behaviors of employees on the floor and see how their motivations best match up with the theories from class. I would apply expectancy theory (Academy, 2012) to understand why some workers perform better than others. I would also interview employees to understand what expectations help them to remain good workers. I would apply equity theory (Video, 2013) to understand why morale lowers when employees see others rewarded better for similar performance. I saw this in my first supervisor job when raises were given out. I would apply job characteristics theory (Kim, 2013) to understand how I can help improve the variety of floor tasks for better performance. I believe the more variety, autonomy, and decision authority an employee has, the better the performance. As for my own leadership, I have held a couple of supervisor jobs since that first one and have been promoted to production manager for the last five years. I would perform the role completely different now. I would start by involving leaders on the floor in my decision making (Sinek, 2019), and use the progress principle (Amabile & Kramer, 2011) to make decisions before up stepping to discipline. I would use the check in vs check up (Amabile & Kramer, 2011) strategy, and take on a humble leadership style like referent leadership (French and Raven’s forms of power, n.d.) to gain buy in. Now I know that to operate as a leader successfully you must employ all of these tools. Q4). Leadership team recommendations  When studying myself in my first supervisor job I immediately recognized that I am the problem and reason that the floor is unmotivated to work for me. To fix my leadership problem and gain buy-in, I recommend – more floor participation, improved equity, I need to foster camaraderie, participate in employee recognition and identify purpose with employees (Economy, 2019). My leadership style was self-centered and lacking. I confess this but did not understand how to properly lead. I would recommend that I do not allow my own intrinsic and extrinsic (Goldberg, 2019) motivations to get in the way of employing good leadership skills that work and are effective, that way I can focus on taking care of employees.

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